Introduction; Cost Savings of Contracting Out Refuse Collection in The Netherlands; Contracting Out Refuse Collection in The Netherlands; Contracting Out in Sweden: Ownership and Production Costs; Does Public Ownership Impair Efficiency in Norwegian Refuse Collection?; Refuse Collection in Spain: Privatization, Intermunicipal Cooperation, and Concentration; How to Get Increasing Competition in the Dutch Refuse Collection Market?; Dutch Cost Savings in Unit-Based Pricing of Household Waste; Assessing Instruments for Mixed Household Solid Waste Collection Services in Flanders
Summary
The Waste Market undertakes the interesting task of examining the creative ways in which a handful of European countries, namely Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, have managed their waste collection market. For instance, the Netherlands experimented a lot with competition and different types of ownership. It shows that competition is more important than ownership. The use of public firms, exceptional in other European countries, seems to be a powerful instrument to enhance competition. The lack of these firms might explain why private production is not always cheaper than ow